The present invention relates to a filter assembly machine.
On known so-called filter assembly machines, the filters are connected to the cigarettes using adhesive-coated paper strips wrapped around groups of two coaxial cigarette lengths separated by a filter twice the length of that of a finished cigarette.
The said strips are usually wrapped around the said groups as the latter travel over a roller conveyor, on which they are retained by suction inside seats formed on the peripheral surface of the roller. An arched plate coaxial with the said roller, and separated from the cylindrical surface of the same by a distance approximately equal to the cigarette diameter, provides for expelling the said groups successively and by friction from the respective said seats, and rolling them along the surface of the roller into the next seat on the same. As it rolls along the surface of the said roller, each group is wrapped inside a connecting strip placed beforehand in the vicinity of the group contacting the surface of the conveyor roller. Continual improvement to the output speed of cigarette manufacturing machines has led to the design of increasingly fast filter assembly machines, to enable the formation of cigarette manufacturing lines on which the output of each manufacturing machine is connected to the input of a respective filter assembly machine. Such improvement to the aforementioned known filter assembly machines has enabled extremely high-speed output which can no longer be acclerated by straightforward mechanical means alone, without subjecting the cigarettes to unacceptable stress, particularly at the rolling stage. In fact, any further increase in the rolling speed of double cigarettes as described above would inevitably result in tobacco leakage from the open ends of the cigarette lengths.